


the killing keeps us close enough

by strikinglight



Series: 'Til Human Voices Wake Us [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Backstory, Character Study, Friendship/Love, Human Experimentation, M/M, Team as Family, Training, lots of nosebleeds, mommy kenma in slightly token mad scientist role
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-23
Updated: 2016-01-23
Packaged: 2018-05-15 09:57:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5781499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strikinglight/pseuds/strikinglight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s always figured <i>want</i> has little to do with it—there’s no such thing as desire when there’s a war on, every breath and every movement channeled in the service of necessity, every decision ultimately a question of which battle it’ll be that chooses you. Even entering the Drift with Kuroo had felt like an imperative; Kenma still has dreams about doors being thrown open inside his head, his consciousness sliding together with Kuroo’s, meeting and intertwining. He remembers the bone-deep recognition, the magnetic pull of a familiar energy, the need.</p><p>“I don’t think,” he says, careful, “it makes sense to fight alone after all.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	the killing keeps us close enough

**Author's Note:**

> This stands as a straight-narrative prequel to ["'til human voices wake us"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5696341), though the timelines overlap a little near the end. Also functional as a standalone, I think. Loaded down with copious amounts of backstory because the seed planted itself in my brain and would just. Not. Leave.
> 
> Small nods to the PacRim graphic novel, _Tales from Year Zero_.
> 
> get me out of this au i'm dying

Kenma is seventeen when the letter comes, summoning them to the Shatterdome. His mother makes him open it up and read it aloud, and its contents are simple enough to understand, for all the jargon:

_The Pan Pacific Defense Corps extends the invitation to Dr. Kozume Junko to assume the position of officer in the J-Tech division under the Jaeger Program. We believe that Dr. Kozume’s expertise on neuroscience and brain-machine interfaces will prove invaluable to the Program in this time of great need for all humanity. The option to assist in the endeavor is likewise extended to her son Kenma, who will surely not lack for chances to further his education on-site, and can be assured of opportunities for more significant participation in the Program should he develop an interest in the same._

It’s not exactly an invitation, not with the letter going on to stress that they should be at the base within a week from receiving the summons, if at all possible. There’s an urgency stretched taut under the bureaucratic flattery, and in light of this it’s easy to reach an agreement. If they take only the essentials with them, they can manage in two or three days.

Leave, stay. School, home, J-Tech, the Shatterdome. All these things are one to Kenma. If anything, the transfer will give him the chance to disappear—to escape the strange stares and the whispers of _freak_ and _walking brain_ and _genius boy,_ recede into his mother’s long shadow and turn completely and utterly into Dr. Kozume’s Son.

(He figures that this house is too big now for just the two of them, anyway, too empty since his father moved out—the curtains fraying, dust collecting on the chairs in the dining room they never use.)

But then there’s Kuroo in the house next door, Kuroo whose bedroom window has been level with Kenma’s for as long as either of them can remember. Kenma doesn’t even need to raise the blinds to see inside his room. He can mark the place where the old, crooked floor lamp stands in his head, the books all but falling over one another on their shelves, the dirty clothes strewn across the floor.

“You done packing?”

It’s Kenma’s last day, and Kuroo’s leaning his long body against the window frame and looking out at him across the alley between both their houses. They’ve sat together like this mornings and evenings since they were children, but it feels different somehow—the kind of different that makes Kenma fold his arms on the sill and push his head down against them, hiding.

“Uh-huh,” he says. He’s never had to worry about Kuroo hearing him. Kuroo’s ears are sharp, attuned to the particular frequencies of Kenma’s voice, however small he thinks to make it. “I got done yesterday.”

“So that’s it, then.” The sun’s coming down behind them, and the fading light makes red shadows in Kuroo’s hair. “You’re really gonna go.”

It’s not as if they can’t imagine being apart. They’ve talked a little bit about leaving before, what with Kuroo on his way out of high school and prepping for university—how he’s probably not going to go far, how he’ll still be close enough to visit—but never about anything like this. Never about what to do if their positions are ever reversed. Never about what will happen if one of them finds he might not come back.

Kenma knows where he’s going. Suddenly it’s kind of hard to breathe.

“Give me a year,” Kuroo says. “One year and I’ll come to you.”

There’s something about the way he talks, some small verbal tic or inflection that makes everything he says sound like a bald statement of fact—as if everything is certain. As if everything is as he says it is, or he’ll make it so. It’s strange to remember the kind of world they live in—the ocean alive with so many monsters, the flattened cities—when Kenma’s listening to Kuroo talk.

“Okay,” he says. In spite of everything, it’s tempting to believe.

 

* * *

 

The official press is that the amount of information delivered from the Jaeger to the pilot is too great for a single human brain to handle alone, and that the attempt to pilot a Jaeger solo is highly dangerous and potentially fatal. Hence the creation of the Drift, to allow the pilots to share the neural load by merging their minds into a single consciousness.

The practice of things, of course, is much stickier. In the event of real combat against a kaiju, there are a number of possible instances when Rangers may find themselves without a capable partner—death, loss of consciousness, damage to the Jaeger. In such instances the possibility of the Ranger assuming full control on their own is contingent upon their ability to bear the neural load unassisted, as well as the length of time they are able to do so.

Kenma’s days are spent watching his mother run simulations of such situations in the labs, testing the limits of single-pilot Jaeger control, probing at the potential untapped capacities of the brain. Their watchwords are _greater efficiency, catastrophe, development, progress._ Kenma wonders sometimes if all of those things are just code for _monster._ It’s the kaiju, after all, who are supposed to be killing people, but wreaking this kind of havoc on their brains feels like much the same thing.

By the middle of his first month in service he’s as well-versed in the signs of neural overload as any of the official interns—the seizures, the bleeding from the nose and mouth, the frenetic surge of mental activity captured by the brain scans. By the end of the second he’s already seen someone die, seen the violent twitching and jerking give way to stillness, the images on the monitors in the observation room going black to signify brain death and the imminent cessation of bodily functions.

 _(Kenma, Kenma,_ Kuroo would probably say, and Kenma can hear his voice as clearly as if they’re standing side by side, feel the press of his arm heavy and real across his shoulders. _Talk to me in plain Japanese, please. You know, the kind you can use on cats and dogs.)_

In these moments something cold coils in the pit of Kenma’s stomach and he needs a few seconds to stop, hunching forward, pressing the back of his hand to his mouth to keep the sickness down. Then, when the wave of pain passes, he reaches across for the intercom: “Medical, Medical. Requesting emergency services to J-Tech Test Bay 4. I repeat—”

 

* * *

 

Kuroo promised him a year. The first sign that he’s actually made good on this promise is a biodata form in the lab’s file for potential solo piloting test subjects.

“Kuroo Tetsurou?”

How very like him to just show up like this, without so much as a heads-up. Kenma hadn’t even known that he’d been on-site, much less that he was already so deep into his training, though he’s not sure whether he should attribute this to any active hiding on Kuroo’s part or his own detachment from the life of the base on the whole. Kenma’s world for the past year has been all machine, all glass observation windows and lab coats and learning to be a necessary monster, his memories of Kuroo the only human thing he has left to hold. Now that he’s suddenly here—and in circumstances that Kenma hasn’t anticipated, hasn’t factored into his calculations—Kenma can feel his mind short-circuit, panic and irritation beginning to war for dominance. (The first, most immediate emotion is something like pleasure, but he stamps that out immediately. All told it’s the most human he’s felt in months.)

“Is there something you find unsatisfactory about his file? I was assured that he’s physically and psychologically sound, and you should be able to see yourself that his simulator scores are nothing to shake a stick at.” His mother’s tone is carefully neutral, disinterested in a way Kenma’s learned to imitate with his own voice. It hardly seems like they’re talking about the boy who lived next door to them for more than ten years, and not some stranger. “His enlistment was voluntary, for the record.”

“Even so, ma’am.” That’s what he’s called her since they started serving together. Not “mother,” never “mama” or “mom,” but “ma’am.” Sometimes “Dr. Kozume.” And for Kenma to even speak up this way is so unprecedented it gives them both pause. “He’s a cadet.”

“One of the best we have,” she says, and Kenma can’t deny that. “And this is merely another simulation.”

 _One that could kill him if it’s mishandled,_ Kenma wants to point out, but he only says, “Permission to assume control of neural bridge operations, then.”

One eyebrow goes up then, a subtle shift of expression Kenma finds he can’t quite read. “Will you be able to handle it?”

“I’m reasonably confident in my abilities, yes. More importantly, he trusts me.”

He can only hope it’s still true.

 

* * *

 

When they meet again, the promised one year hangs thick in the air between them, but it goes without saying that this is neither the time nor the place for a heartfelt reunion. For what it’s worth, Kenma’s glad that it still seems so easy for them to pass their thoughts to one another unsaid— _Not yet, not yet, let me do most of the talking for now._

“I’ll be your lead neural bridge operator for the duration of this process. We’ll be monitoring your vitals and your brain activity, but don’t hesitate to signal us as well once you begin to feel the overload.”

It’s a spiel he’s heard his mother and the other techs use during prior test runs, but this is his first time dispensing it. There’s an acidity to the words, a cold metallic burn; Kenma wonders if Kuroo feels it as he lets Kenma help him into the chair and strap him in, attach the electrodes to his arms and chest. His face is stolid and grave in a way Kenma’s never seen before—in all of Kenma’s memories Kuroo is smiling, but it’s a crooked smile, almost a leer, as if he’s permanently up to no good—and his eyes never leave Kenma’s face.

“Just let your mind go blank, like you do during the regular combat sims; you’ll be more receptive that way.” His hair is as impossible as ever, thick and black and pointing in all directions, and Kenma struggles a little with the headset as he fits it over Kuroo’s head. Something pricks at the inside of his chest when his hands skim over Kuroo’s cheeks, some tenderness he doesn’t know what to do with, and he pulls them back, scalded. There’s no need to linger.

“Do you have any questions, cadet?”

Kuroo’s eyes make their slow track up and down, taking in Kenma’s glasses, his white coat, the clipboard in his hands. Then he glances away, staring straight ahead, and exhales. “No. No, let’s do it.”

Kenma finds Kuroo looks strangely small from the other side of the observation window once he’s stepped out of the testing room and closed the door. He can feel his mother’s gaze hot on the nape of his neck, but he keeps his back to where she sits to one side of the lab and signals the other techs to initialize the solo-pilot simulation.

He’s marked a variety of responses to the initial surge—some test subjects cry out in pain, others instinctively lock their minds down before the neural bridge is fully formed, while for others the seizures begin almost instantaneously. But Kuroo is quiet, the change of state only perceptible in the red splotches blooming across the brain scan projected on one screen, the jagged lines that signal his heart rate spiking on another.

After a few beats of silence, Kenma brings the mic attached to his headset closer to his mouth and speaks into it. “Cadet, your status?”

No answer. Kenma can hear Kuroo breathing, but that’s all. He wets his lips, swallows the panic, and tries again.

“Kuro.” The nickname slips out of him unbidden. There’s that pang again, that tightness— _Talk to me, black cat._ “This is Mission Control. Your status?”

“… All systems green, Mission Control.” The voice that speaks in his ear is strained, fractured with effort, but Kenma steals a glance at the monitors and finds the neural bridge holding steady. “Orders?”

“Tell your brain to tell your left arm to tell your hand to move its fingers.”

Another pause, and then, absurd as it might seen, a small huff into Kenma’s ear—something that he knows might have even been a laugh. “Is that all?”

“We’re taking it slow.” Still an idiot, then. Kenma almost sighs.

“Roger that,” Kuroo says, and Kenma’s eyes go to the main monitor above his head, where the image of the simulated Jaeger is projected. He holds his breath.

 

* * *

 

Moving the fingers is usually as much as any one test subject can handle on the first day. The runs that take place over the next months are incrementally more difficult in terms of duration and the complexity of the tasks to be executed, focusing first on moving the arms and legs, then walking, then deploying any of the variety of weapons in the virtual arsenal. Always Kenma makes it a point to stop when the bleeding begins, even without a signal.

He’s standing now with his fingers pinched over the bridge of Kuroo’s nose, watching him bleed out into a hand towel. Kuroo is sitting up and leaning forward slightly out of the chair, Kenma’s other hand against the back of his head, almost cradling it.

“Are you all right?” One day, he thinks, he’ll be able to keep his voice steady on the question. “Say your name for me.”

“Kuroo Tetsurou.” Kuroo’s voice is muffled by the hand towel, but they’ve done this enough times now for him to know what follows by heart. “And you’re Kozume Kenma. We’re in J-Tech Laboratory 3.”

“The subject is lucid, but experiencing some nausea and minor bleeding,” Kenma says into his headset. He knows that back in the observation room the techs have probably already logged the simulation time and the tasks accomplished for the terminal report. “I’ll escort him back to his quarters.”

When the bleeding finally stops, after a total of five to ten minutes on average, Kenma takes Kuroo’s arm and helps him out of the chair, steering him gently out of the lab. When they’re out in the hallway, he lets that arm fall across his shoulders, bracing one of his own arms around Kuroo’s waist to take the weight. It’s only in these moments that he allows himself to think about the year they spent apart, lets himself wonder about how Kuroo’s gotten taller, broader, gained a soldier’s eyes.

Kenma wishes sometimes that he could kill the part of him that shatters each time he sees Kuroo bleed. It makes him feel too much like a person again.

“You don’t have to be here,” he always says. “You could go home.”

“I can’t,” Kuroo answers, and squeezes Kenma to his side with what remains of his strength.

 

* * *

 

What passes for an argument, between Dr. Kozume and her son:

“If this demo’s going to go forward, ma’am, we need some kind of contingency plan.”

“Be that as it may, there’s no way you’d be able to force yourself into the Pons System and Drift with him remotely. You’ve never even test-Drifted. Who knows what it could do to your brain?”

( _I don’t even want to imagine what we’ve been doing to_ his _brain,_ Kenma almost says. He swallows it down.)

“But it’s the only feasible course of action, isn’t it? We can’t afford to lose another pilot to these solo tests, and you know as well as I do that once he starts to go into seizure the exertion will probably kill him if we don’t find a quick way to mitigate the neural load.”

“I’m well aware of the risks to the pilot, Kenma, but I don’t think _you_ realize how likely it is that we could lose the both of you if you go tampering with the Drift.”

“He trusts me. By virtue of that alone I have a higher chance of success than anyone else on this base.”

(Kenma can’t believe it when that last part actually comes out of his mouth, but he figures it’s what Kuroo would have said, had their positions been switched. She doesn’t seem to have anything to say, either, for what seems like a long time.)

“We’ll outfit you with a Pons headset as an emergency measure. But, Kenma—”

“I’ll take responsibility.”

 

* * *

 

The Jaeger they’re assigned for the first official solo demonstration, the Mark-3 Scarlet Lancer, is one of the tallest on-site, but she looks tiny from the observation deck, and Kuroo no bigger than a grain of sand as Kenma watches the techs fix him into the Conn-Pod. In turn, Kenma sets the Pons headset unassisted on his own head, gritting his teeth against the cold bite of the metal clamps over his forehead and against his temples.

“Scarlet Lancer, this is Mission Control.” The PA system in the control tower makes his voice echo strangely, loud and resonant and bigger than he’s ever heard it in his own ears. “What’s your status?”

“Clear, Mission Control.” If Kuroo’s fazed at all by the possibility of his imminent death, there’s no trace of it in his speech. He’s being the soldier again. “We’re ready for the Neural Handshake.”

“Copy that. Initiating Neural Handshake in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.”

It’s to be expected that the simulator can only approximate the true weight—both physical and mental—of handling the actual machine without a co-pilot. So much depends upon the mental capacities of the pilot himself or herself, and they’ve only tested with a Jaeger once before—Kenma feels his stomach lurch, and pulls himself away from the memory before he starts to fixate.

Like every prior time Kuroo slides into the Drift without a sound, his heart rate a staccato of electric blips, his breath thick in Kenma’s ear.

“Come in, Scarlet Lancer. Status?” Kenma feels like a broken record. But he doesn’t miss the way Kuroo’s voice cracks a little on the “green” in “All systems green.”

There’s a staggering jerkiness to the Jaeger’s movements that looks like it might be a cause for concern, but somehow they manage to go through the motions like they’ve done in simulation—finger movements, then hands and arms, then walking. Still Kenma’s hand hovers restlessly over the control panel before him, itching to press the sequence of buttons that will cut the uplink before Kuroo sinks too deep into the Drift, even as he speaks into the mic: “Let’s try to draw the broadsword now.”

He’s almost expecting it when the alarms go off, but his heart catapults itself up into his throat anyway.

His tools seem to understand what’s happening—they’re built to trace the process of synchronization between human and machine, and so are quick to show Kenma what he needs to see—the flow of the information issuing forth from Scarlet Lancer’s CPU, the angry red waves that signal the pilot’s brain being overwhelmed. He hears Kuroo gag, bite out “Kenma,” then he’s seizing, and they’re losing him.

Kenma never thought he’d be a good soldier. Certainly he’d never conceived of himself doing the things that soldiers do, before now—the split-second calls, the quick leap to action. Holding someone else’s life in his hands.

But he’s doing all of those things now as he throws the switch that will send him into the Drift, and drops through nothingness into Kuroo’s head.

Even half-conscious like this, pushed to the very edge, Kenma knows where to find him. He feels his way forward blind in the middle space between their minds, casting a net outward with his thoughts for the most concrete things he knows—the way Kuroo’s breaths come, the sound of his feet striking against the ground, so many shared memories they seem to run for years. Two houses on a small street back in the city, side by side. Cuts and scrapes on their knees, bruises on the points of their elbows. The sun going down on Kenma’s last day— _Give me a year. One year and I’ll come to you._

He’s dimly aware of still being himself, leaning one elbow against the counter in the control tower and pressing a sleeve to the trickle of blood that’s started to run from his nose. He can hear the techs shuffling around him, hear his mother calling up a read on the synchronicity level for their two minds. But he is also _there_ , next to Kuroo in the half-dark of the Conn-Pod, feeling the living pulse of the machine all around them like they were born for this.

 _Kenma?_ He hears Kuroo’s voice, but knows it’s not real speech. It’s faster than that. Faster than thought.

 _Lean on me,_ he says.

 

* * *

 

Word travels fast in the Shatterdome, and it’s not a week after the Scarlet Lancer demo that another letter arrives at the J-Tech labs. It’s addressed to Kenma this time, with the official PPDC seal stamped hard and final as a sentence across the flap.

“The Marshal says I’m to continue working with the other Rangers-in-training.” Kenma slides the unsealed envelope across the desk, feeling for all the world like a kid handing over his report card. It’s both funny and not—he remembers being more afraid of report card days than anything else in this world. More than death, more than kaiju, though he’d been pulling straight A’s every other trimester since grade school. “I need your signature to endorse my transfer, so it’s official.”

He’s never spoken to her in imperatives before. The surprise probably shows on both their faces, and Kenma feels the ghost of his report-card-day-fear kicking up in this gut, ridiculous though it may seem. He’s not certain he knows how to be anything besides Dr. Kozume’s Son; the very possibility of it is a hypothesis even Dr. Kozume herself hasn’t yet thought to test.

“I never had you figured for a soldier.” She squints down at the document from behind her glasses, expression flat as always, voice pitched in that same guarded monotone. It occurs to Kenma just then, just as a stray thought at the back of his mind, to ask himself how much he’s learned to school his face and speech from watching her. “Is this really what you want?”

That throws him off. He’s always figured _want_ has little to do with it—there’s no such thing as desire when there’s a war on, every breath and every movement channeled in the service of necessity, every decision ultimately a question of which battle it’ll be that chooses you. Even entering the Drift with Kuroo had felt like an imperative; Kenma still has dreams about doors being thrown open inside his head, his consciousness sliding together with Kuroo’s, meeting and intertwining. He remembers the bone-deep recognition, the magnetic pull of a familiar energy, the need.

“I don’t think,” he says, careful, “it makes sense to fight alone after all.”

“… Ma’am,” he adds as an afterthought, because he is always polite, and the word “mother” sits strangely on his tongue, like a word in a foreign language.

The look she gives him from the other side of the desk is one he now knows well. The measuring look. The let’s-see look. The look Kenma’s seen leveled at test subjects and experimental samples and prototypes. He doesn’t realize he’s forgotten to keep breathing until she pulls a fountain pen from her coat pocket and signs on the dotted line, and Kenma feels the knots in his chest loosen, the air rushing out of him softly of its own accord.

“I’ll see you in a few months, then, for your sync tests.” The envelope slides back across the table. “They’ll pair you with Kuroo-kun eventually, I assume.”

“Ma’am,” Kenma says again, and excuses himself.

 

* * *

 

The barracks feel like an entirely different world compared to the pale antiseptic silence of the laboratories—the trainees are chatty and boisterous, and it’s impossible to walk between the beds without bumping into a dangling leg or stepping on a stray dirty shirt. Kenma finds he barely remembers what it feels like to be among so many people in the same place, but the crowds mean it’s also easy enough for him to disappear even on his first night, reclining against his cot by the wall and slipping quietly beneath the radar of every person in the room.

Except one—a slender, fair-skinned boy a little older than Kenma himself, who’s stretched out next to him. He’d been lying on his stomach when Kenma came in, absorbed in penning a letter, and it takes a few minutes for Kenma to realize that his neighbor’s attention shifts slightly from time to time, darting surreptitiously from the piece of paper in front of him to Kenma’s bed and back again. His eyes are brown, curious without being invasive, and there’s a gentleness to them Kenma’s never seen on a soldier before.

When those eyes flick sideward again and finally catch Kenma’s gaze, the boy’s face breaks into the broadest grin he’s ever seen—a sunny, unabashed ear-to-ear smile that seems to point the way straight to his heart. The look so startles Kenma that he can’t help staring back; he never thought he’d meet anyone here who still looked like that.

“Hey there,” he says. “You’re the transferee from J-Tech?”

He hadn’t realized his reputation would precede him, so he just nods, his eyes still a little wide, his mouth making a small surprised o. The boy starts a little, concerned—he reaches out a hand, but thinks better of it and pulls it back again to rub at the back of his head instead.

“Gosh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry or anything. It’s just that word gets around, yeah?” His face is softer now, sheepish. “I’m Sugawara Koushi; Suga for short. What’s your name?”

That’s a question he at least knows how to answer, even if his voice catches embarrassingly on the syllables and makes him stutter out “K-K-Kozume Kenma,” like he’s a small child learning to say his name for the first time. But Suga doesn’t laugh at him.

“Kozume-kun, huh?” He looks thoughtful, but he doesn’t mention Kenma’s mother, or anything he’s heard about the precise nature of their experiments as NBOs. Kenma finds himself inexplicably grateful.

“That was pretty amazing, what you did with Kuroo-kun, you know,” Suga says instead, and he looks straight into Kenma’s eyes as he says it so he’ll know the words aren’t empty flattery, that he really means it, every bit. “You probably saved his life. We couldn’t believe you’d never Drifted before.”

“It—it wasn’t hard.” It’s not a boast, just the truth—and there’s something about Sugawara that seems to tell Kenma he’ll accept it as such. “He’s my—my best friend. And the bond of trust makes all the difference when it comes to how easily you can enter the Drift, doesn’t it?”

“Trust. Yeah. Yeah, I get it.” Suga smiles again, and Kenma warms to it in spite of himself. “Best friends, huh? For how long?”

Kenma doesn’t think he’s ever spoken so many words at once to a stranger before.

 

* * *

 

Kenma’s not much for sparring, especially not under the Fightmaster’s falcon-eye, but he and Kuroo go to the Kwoon Room sometimes in their free hours to watch Suga dance.

“Dance” is the only word for it, really. It’s easy for anyone else to see what happens in the Kwoon like a fight; when Suga has a staff in his hands anyone who stops to watch him soon learns what it means to treat it like a conversation. He’s graceful and controlled and surprisingly strong for someone so slight, and he matches all his opponents step for step—first retreating, then advancing, every thrust and parry calculated, perfectly timed.

If aptitude in the Kwoon is any indication of Drift compatibility, Suga could Drift with just about anyone, but he seems most in his element when he’s on the floor with Sawamura Daichi. There’s a fierceness to his movements then, a spirit that’s not quite there during any other bouts, and Kenma’s certain no two people ever smile at each other when they’re sparring as much as they do.

“Hey, Kenma!” Suga’s leaning back on his hands now, flushed and breathless, having just been quite literally knocked off his feet. He looks a little sore, but he’s laughing as Daichi gives him a hand up. “Take a turn with me? This big lug’s starting to be able to read me like a book.”

“No chance, he’ll only get on the floor for me,” Kuroo quips before Kenma can answer. He has the good grace to wince, at least, when Kenma slaps at his arm.

“Well, how about you and I have a go, then?”

Daichi comes to stand beside him as Kuroo takes the floor. Kenma’s been seeing a lot of Daichi since he started training, mostly because he and Suga are strangely joined at the hip in spite of only having met on-base—Kenma wonders, looking at them, if soulmates might exist after all, and if it’s actually true that everyone is born with someone in their future—but also because he seems to enjoy spending time with Kuroo _and_ with him. Over the past months it’s been easy for the four of them to gravitate toward one another, even in the most crowded of spaces—sharing tables at the mess hall, showing up at the combat simulators or the Kwoon or the gymnasium at the same time without even talking about it. It makes Kenma feel warm to realize it, almost flattered—he doesn’t know why, exactly, but he doesn’t mind.

He never quite forgets that they’re preparing to be sent into battle, but slowly, slowly, he begins to feel at ease.

 

* * *

 

It doesn’t take much more than the first few drops for Kenma to notice the anomaly.

He’s heard the techs remark more than once about their synchronicity, the uncannily complete merging of their two minds in the Drift, but he’s sure it shouldn’t extend to when they’ve disconnected from the hardware and become two people again. Kuroo’s mind remains a constant, albeit muted, presence on the very fringes of his consciousness even out of battle. Kenma recognizes easily enough that the energy isn’t his own—it’s too shifty, too crackly and electric, and they’ve been finishing each other’s sentences in ways that should be impossible, even for them.

Kuroo feels it too, though he’s cavalier as always. “Maybe our brains are melting. Wanna see your mom about it?”

Kenma doesn’t—he doesn’t want to go back down to the labs if he can help it—but he knows it might be important, so he settles for a phone call.

“It’s not anything to worry about.” She doesn’t sound surprised; somehow that’s reassuring to Kenma, though he can hear the machines whirring and beeping on the other side of the line. Try as he might to ignore it, the noises still send a cold trickle down his back. “What you’re experiencing is a side effect of the Neural Handshake—in some cases we’ve found the link between pilots remains partially active even after the Drift itself goes down. We call it the Ghost Drift.”

“Like a phantom limb?”

“Like a phantom limb. It’s nothing like actually being one mind, as I’m sure you’re aware, but you’ll probably retain a sense of what your partner is thinking and feeling at any given time.”

“And this is an unanticipated side effect?” It’s kind of a rhetorical question—Kenma can’t imagine how this could be the product of deliberate engineering—but he asks anyway.

“That’s right. As a result I’m afraid that as of yet there’s precious little research on the Ghost Drift, but it doesn’t seem to do any harm. The connection might even prove useful to you.” The smooth gunmetal voice on the other end softens all of a sudden, starts to sound almost fond. Kenma wonders if it’s just the connection acting up. “And you two boys have always been of one mind anyway.”

“Thank you, Doctor. That’s all I need,” he says, softly, and hangs up.

“So we’re not dying? Or mutating?” Kuroo looks almost disappointed.

“I guess not. Just stuck in each other’s heads.”

“I can think of worse things,” Kuroo says, and Kenma nods and agrees, “Tons worse,” because that’s how things have always stood between them, anyway.

 

* * *

 

“That’s our girl,” Suga tells him, pointing.

Kenma knows, he’s seen Brave Aurora a couple of times already, but she’s still a sight to behold each time—lovely, lethal, sleek indigo blue and silver paint job shining in the fluorescent light. They’ve only just transferred her out of the test bay, and she stands now at rest next to Scarlet Lancer. Scarlet is built broader and heavier, and so looks hulking and hard-worn in comparison, but it’s pleasing to Kenma to see them together all the same.

“The Marshal says we’ll probably be your wing team for a while, until we find our footing.” Suga’s practically beaming; Kenma can hear it without even having to look at him. “I can’t believe we’ll finally get to fight together.”

“We couldn’t have asked for anyone better,” he answers, and means it, for all that he feels the warmth undercut by something twisting a little in his gut—some small fear that isn’t real yet, but pricks insistently at Kenma all the same. “Though you’ll have to bear with Kuro’s babbling.”

Suga chuckles. He always looks so amused at these little cues of Kenma’s, these reminders that he’s human, even if only just. “I can only imagine. I don’t know how you stand it.”

Everyone puts such a high premium on the imperative that pilots trust each other—it’s what makes the Drift possible, after all—but Kenma can’t help thinking there’s just as much work that goes into coordinating a strike team and a wing team. More even, in some ways, because nothing mechanical holds that trust together, no machine assists and improves their synergy. It either happens or it doesn’t, this learning to be one. And if it does, there’s the trouble of having to be responsible for all the lives you hold.

Suga probably sees more than he lets on, too, though he never pushes too hard. He doesn’t pry. He only ever winks and says something silly that he knows will make everyone laugh and put them at ease, something like “I guess that means Daichi and I should start calling you ‘senpai.’”

Kenma almost forgets himself and laughs.

 

* * *

 

Some rare nights Kenma feels that perhaps they’ll see the end of the war.

It’s disconcerting sometimes how Kuroo smiles in the heat of battle, or how much he talks when the fighting is thickest, but Kenma feels his mind afire in the Drift and it’s impossible not to trust it. They are nothing if not precise when they fight together, and Scarlet Lancer hums to life along with them as she strikes out with her long clawed fingers and spills the kaiju blue.

Out on the water with Brave Aurora beside them, it feels—not secure exactly, of course not. But sure. Kenma sees the light of the moon on the deep blues of her armor, sees her tear through the waves, swift and beautiful, and when he follows the arc of her whip through the air with his eyes he realizes it’s the safest he can ever remember feeling.

When the missions are over Kuroo falls back against the door of their room and pulls Kenma against him almost with a violence, and they lean into each other and breathe together. Kenma presses his ear to Kuroo’s chest to listen to his heart pounding like the ocean against the walls of bone, counts the thumping beats until it evens out and quiets, steadying.

On the long static days when they do nothing but wait, Kuroo falls asleep in Kenma’s lap and Kenma cards his fingers through his hair. At such moments Kenma thinks about Daichi and Suga and the way they look at each other across the Drivesuit Room after they return from a dispatch, thinks of the way they walk with their arms around each other seemingly without even thinking about it. He wonders if this is what passes for happiness when you’re at war—the curious warmth he finds in Suga’s smiles and Daichi’s strong hands and the weight of Kuroo’s head across his knees.

He thinks about the dreams he has sometimes. Some nights he wakes splintered from his sleep with the icy salt tang of the deep sea in his throat and phantom claws digging into his flesh, and figures that maybe this fear is the price you pay for being a person.

“You’re not allowed to die,” he says one evening, the fingers of his left hand idle against the side of Kuroo’s neck, over the soft place where his heart beats. They’re tangled together in the bottom bunk with no concern at all for space—that’s how they sleep now, mostly, since Kuroo’s usually too tired to climb the ladder and they’re all right to just let their bodies lie however they want. A head buried against a shoulder, the arm of one snaked around the other’s belly, like it’s the proximity and nothing else keeping them anchored and alive.

It’s an absurd thing to say, and they both know it. Their time isn’t theirs anymore, hasn’t been for years—not since they signed their lives away. They don’t even belong to each other, when all is said and done. But it’s tempting sometimes to believe otherwise.

Kuroo doesn’t look up at him. Instead he takes Kenma’s hand and brings it to his face, presses his lips to the inside of Kenma’s wrist so the ends of the words trail softly over his skin.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

 

* * *

 

_Scarlet Lancer and Brave Aurora, report to Bay 8, level A42. Kaiju, codename Bakunawa, Category 4 sighted at 0200 hours. I repeat—_

They’re good at it by now, startling up out of bed almost at the same time, though the process is never without a few hitches—Kenma’s head bumps against the bedpost, his arm shoots out and hits Kuroo in the face, but they manage as they always have, untangling limbs and standing and scrabbling around on the floor for clothes. In three minutes flat they’re washed, uniformed, and out in the hall, and Kuroo’s banging his fist against the door next to theirs.

“Rise and shine, lovebirds,” he calls. “It’s time for the drop.”

Daichi’s “Coming, coming!” sounds like little more than a soft rumble on the other side of the door, and just behind that they can hear Suga chuckling quietly, the pad of footsteps and the rustle of fabric. There’s an urgency to the sounds of their movements that the levity can’t disguise; Kenma counts exactly sixty seconds before the door swings open and the four of them stand face to face. Daichi is ready to throw himself into the work as always, sparing them only the smallest of half-smiles as they all start off together down the hall, but Suga’s face all but glows.

“Good morning, big cat and little cat,” he sings out, and Kenma thinks for probably the millionth time that he how strange it is that Suga seems so impervious to being hardened by battle. He could pass for a giddy schoolboy. “You feeling good today?”

Kuroo’s hand shoots out, play-rough, mussing up his silvery hair. “Let’s just make it back in time for breakfast, yeah?”

“For humanity, and for perfectly sunny-side up eggs.” Suga swats at Kuroo’s hand and laughs, clear and bell-like in the empty corridor, and as Kenma listens to the sound echo he thinks he’ll always remember it, hold the music of it in his head until the end of his days. “We’ll do this like always, right, Kenma?”

“R-right,” Kenma answers, averting his eyes as he feels his face heat up. He clears his throat a little, tries again, steadier this time. “Right. We’re counting on you, Suga-san, Daichi-san.”

They must cut a funny figure, their little team, four clueless boys striding shoulder-to-shoulder toward the docking bay where their Jaegers lie waiting to carry them out into the heart of the coming storm. But one of Kenma’s hands buries itself in the pocket of Kuroo’s jacket as they walk, and he feels Suga’s smile on him, bright as a second sun. Maybe that’s enough to keep him believing for now, even if it sounds trite, too simple, to say that they’ll be able to keep fighting as long as they have each other.

The truth, Kenma knows, is that they’re all they have.


End file.
